Packing up

I woke up this morning with the mindset that it was just another rest day – which it was. Kind of. Those of us staying in the Chabad house were up at 8:30 a.m. and headed up the street to the AEPi house where we met the male members of our team and headed out on our final bike ride together making our way to downtown Seattle where the University of Illinois College of Medicine was hosting a brunch for us at a rather fancy restaurant called Campagne. The food was an amazing spread of egg casserole, fruit, organic yogurt and granola with enough food to send everyone out the door full. After leaving the restaurant we gathered in the street near Pike Place Market for a final team photo before exchanging hugs and saying goodbye to our teammates who were leaving from the brunch. A group of us headed a few blocks north to Olympic Sculpture Park where a press conference was suppose to be held. We waited in the park and then waited some more and finally took a group photo in front of the fountain before departing as the press forgot to show up! Nick, Dana, Rachel, Andrea and I all headed back to 21st Avenue NE (our stay over location) passing by Seattle’s Space Needle on the way. Back at the Chabad house Andrea left to spend the afternoon with her mother and Dana and I each spent about an hour re-packing our bags in preparation for our flights home tomorrow. I then journaled for awhile before heading out on my bike to explore the streets of northern Seattle stopping at Tully’s to buy a Green Tea Mango smoothie and then finding a shady spot on the University lawn to sit, relax and journal some more! (It’s been a busy few days and I have a lot to catch up on!) Around 6:00 p.m. I headed back to the Chabad house just in time to say goodbye to Brad and Yiming who were both getting ready to leave. Andrea, Dana and I sent them off by chasing the Topol’s car down the road waving to them! We then walked up to the AEPi house to see what our teammates there were doing for dinner. We ended up walking to the QFC grocery store with Allen managing to take the long way there, as we walked almost a mile when the store was actually just down the hill from where we were staying. I bought Ritz crackers and cheese for dinner along with peanut butter cup ice cream – the dinner of champions! On our walk back we dropped Andrea off at her mom’s hotel and then went to the AEPi house to dine. When we finished eating Jon and I began the daunting task of unpacking and repacking the support van. Doing this involved taking everything out of the van, sorting it into boxes that would be taken back with riders as checked baggage and securing everything with tape to ensure it all made it back safely. Around 1:00 a.m. Praveen and Dana joined in the packing party and by 2:00 a.m. we had everything sorted and the boxes ready to be tapped shut. I fell asleep around 3 a.m. to get three house of sleep before getting up at 6 a.m. as that’s when we will begin shuttling people to the airport in the morning.